The 1969 first edition of Norman Potter’s 'What is a designer' is the only title in the Studio Vista series not to include any images. Nor does it include any color printing, or a portrait of the author on its back cover, also typical of the 40-book series whose abundantly visual contents span art, film, architecture, and urbanism. Potter’s introduction gets straight to the point:

"There are many well-illustrated books on design artefacts and this is not one of them."